As I mentioned before, Cesium has outgrown its mission statement:
Our mission is to create the leading web-based globe and map for visualizing dynamic data. We strive for the best possible performance, precision, visual quality, ease of use, platform support, and content.
As a kickoff to our code sprint, I’d like to propose we update the mission statement to reflect the current and future state of Cesium. We’ll have a live discussion on this thread between now and 5:30pm EST. At least the following Cesium team members are currently on this thread:
Matt Amato
Dan Bagnell
Sarah Chow
Tom Fili
Gabby Getz
Sean Lilley
Hannah Pinkos
Me
To start the discussion, consider this update to the mission statement:
Our mission is to create the leading web-based globe and map. We strive for the best possible static and time-dynamic content, performance, precision, visual quality, and ease of use.
This simply widens the scope beyond “for visualizing dynamic data” since this only represents a fraction of Cesium’s use cases. This also puts “content” at the start of the second sentence since - above all other things - Cesium is about visualizing 3D content (CZML, glTF, 3D Tiles, and all the formats before Cesium). Finally, “platform support” was dropped since it is implicit in “web-based.”
Please provide feedback with an eye on keeping the mission statement concrete, short, and focused. Note that the mission statement isn’t necessarily the same thing as a short tagline on the website.
Nice write-up Patrick, thanks. My one comment would be that “web-based” may be selling ourselves short given the number of users who have been developing offline or desktop applications with Cesium. Browser-based offline technologies that work with Cesium, like Qt’s WebEngine, WebViews, CEF, nw.js, and Microsoft’s BrowserControl may technically be “web-based” but I don’t think they are what people think of when you use the term. I don’t want people to get the impression that Cesium as an “online” technology.
I agree that Cesium is about reaching as many platforms as possible and the web is just our current means of achieving that.
Instead of:
Our mission is to create the leading web-based globe and map. We strive for the best possible static and time-dynamic content, performance, precision, visual quality, and ease of use.
We could say:
Our mission is to create the leading 3D globe and map. We strive for the best possible static and time-dynamic content, performance, precision, visual quality,
This may be broadening the scope too much, but do you want to mention anything about maintaining the community around Cesium? Your dedication to community engagement, quick responses, and direct and frequent interaction with users, seems like a big part of what makes Cesium what it is.
+1, I only would suggest that “We strive for the best possible static and time-dynamic content” sounds like you’re providing content. What about putting that phrase back after “map” as in:
Our mission is to create the leading web-based globe and map for static and time-dynamic content. We strive for the best possible performance, precision, visual quality, and ease of use.
Our mission is to create the leading 3D globe and map for static and time-dynamic content. We strive for the best possible performance, precision, visual quality, and platform support, community, and ease of use.
We strive for the best possible performance, precision, visual quality, and platform support, community, and ease of use.
If this isn’t to wordy, maybe replace the second sentence with something along the lines of:
“We strive for the best possible performance, precision, visual quality, platform support and ease of use while supporting and engaging our community.”
Our mission is to create the leading 3D globe and map for static and time-dynamic content. We optimize performance, precision, visual quality, platform support, community, and ease of use.
Our mission is to create the leading 3D globe and map for static and time-dynamic content, with the best possible performance, precision, visual quality, platform support, community, and ease of use.
Our mission is to create the leading 3D globe and map for static and time-dynamic content by developing the best performance, precision, visual quality, platform support, community, and ease of use.
Devil’s advocate here: Do you need “visual quality” or “platform support”? I’m not sure what “visual quality” means really as most of that is up to users of your library. And isn’t platform support limited ultimately to browsers that support webgl?
Our mission is to create the leading 3D globe and map for static and time-dynamic content, with the best possible performance, precision, visual quality, platform support, community, and ease of use.
Our mission is to create the leading 3D globe and map for static and time-dynamic content, with the best possible performance, precision, visual quality, platform support, community, and ease of use.